Dr. Who BBC Eighth Doctor 64 The Last Resort # Paul Leonard

  

‘I think time and space just fell apart.’

  Anji isn’t sure, but then it’s hard to be sure of anything now. Good Times Inc. promised a new tourist experience, with hotels in every major period of human history – but that kind of arrogance comes with a price, and it’s a price the Doctor doesn’t want to pay.

  As aliens conquer an alternative Earth, Anji and Fitz race to find out how to stop Good Times without stopping time itself. But they find that events are out of control – they can’t even save each other. And when the Doctor tries to help, it gets far worse. At the

  Last Resort, only Sabbath can save the day.

  And then the price gets even higher. . .

  

This is another in the series of continuing adventures

for the Eighth Doctor.

  

THE LAST RESORT

PAUL LEONARD Commissioning Editor: Ben Dunn Creative Consultant & Editor:

  Justin Richards Project Editor: Jacqueline Rayner

  Published by BBC Worldwide Ltd Woodlands, 80 Wood Lane

  London W12 0TT First published 2003

  Copyright c Paul Leonard 2003 The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Original series broadcast on the BBC Format c BBC 1963

  Doctor Who and TARDIS are trademarks of the BBC

  ISBN 0 563 48605 8 Cover imaging by Black Sheep, copyright c BBC 2003

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham

  Cover printed by Belmont Press Ltd, Northampton This novel is dedicated to Jim Mortimore, who showed me unselfish friendship and great patience and taught me all about writing novels

  (everything else is my fault)

Contents

  

  7

  10

  15

  26

  32

  33

  35

  46

  56

  

  69

  80

  90

  102

   114

   123

   130

  

  138

   141

  

  147

   153

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  6 The Last Resort

   175

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  186

Prologue The King Is Dead

  ‘Your Majesty! If you could just turn this way. . . ’ The man had an American accent, but he looked Chinese. He had used the wrong form of address as usual, but the High Supreme Ruler of the Two Egypts and the Greater World had long since ceased trying to insist, just as he had ceased trying to account for all the languages and races and strangeness of the time travellers. The small silver thing, the camera, flashed in Cheops’s eyes, dazzling him for a moment.

  He tried to smile. ‘I think you will find –’ he began, hesitant as always in the tourist language, but a tour guide was striding across the stone floor in her sea-blue uniform, already shouting at him.

  ‘Mister Chee! I’m sorry but I really must ask you to put your camera away! The fabrics and materials here are very sensitive to the light.’

  Mr Chee’s expression became flat, threatening. ‘I paid money,’ he said. ‘Good money, as good as the next man’s. Are you saying I can’t take pictures?’ The guide was facing him now, unintimidated by his anger. ‘The materials of the throne and the Pharaoh’s costume are quite irreplaceable.’ ‘Because no one can do that any more,’ said Cheops, but both guide and tourist ignored him. The fabric that made his cloak and covered the throne had been soaked for hours in the clear Nile water, the colours flowing in, flowing out, like blood in a vein, a hundred times for the floods, a hundred times for the blood of the Hundred Gods –

  But the Nile water was no longer clear, it was slicked with oil from the tourists’ boats, and their factories, and their markets, and their cars. Mr Chee was still talking. ‘Stop me if I’m wrong but I thought that we’d travelled in time, like, in time, so surely these people can make some more of this lapis blue or whatever it is? I mean, it’s not like this is a museum or something!’

  Cheops knew what a museum was, and knew that his Kingdom had become

  8 The Last Resort Osiris, but knew that Mr Chee had more power in the batteries of his camera than the Ring had in Egypt now. The Pharaoh looked round at the great hall, at the Italian marble and Indian gold that dressed the vast sandstone blocks his father’s slaves had dragged along the valley of the Nile two generations ago. The doors were blue glass, fretted with gold, a time-traveller invention. When they opened, it was done by a machine, which made a slight humming sound. The guards stood by, resplendent and holy, and the women flapped the long fronds of palm, but they were gestures, camera-fodder; the guards unarmed, the women unneeded in the air-conditioned throne room.

  Mr Chee and the tour guide were still arguing in low voices near the door. A bare-armed woman wearing black had joined them. She was probably Mr Chee’s wife. Cheops became suddenly conscious of the sweat dribbling down inside the gold breastplate of his costume. He stood up, hoping to retreat to the inner courtyard of this tourists’ temple. He would still be watched, walk- ing amongst the low palms and hibiscus, but at least the air was green and soothing.

  ‘O Supreme One!’ The words of the address were correct, but the tone was brisk. The man in the blue and yellow uniform had a tense, watchful expression. ‘I’m sorry, but we must ask for another hour before you leave. There is a party of over-sixties from Boston due shortly.’

  Cheops nodded, and sat down. He understood his obligations. Gold and machinery had a cost, and he could not say that he had not understood that cost when he had made his agreement with the time travellers, though perhaps he had not grasped the depth of the river of indemnity he had entered, the full extent of its flood.

  ‘Is there anything we can bring for your comfort, O Supreme One?’ It was one of his own guards, resplendent in lapis and brass armour and peacock-feather headdress, bowing low as he spoke.

  ‘All is well.’ Cheops forced himself to speak as a Pharaoh should speak to a mortal, and the young man responded as he should, by silently backing away, still bowing, the peacock feathers swaying like flowers in the wind; but Cheops saw the slight twitch of the guard’s lips below the gilded face-paint, the sup- pressed laughter, and knew that the laughter would escape when the guard went off duty tonight and drank beer in the American bar, wearing his Levis and Nike trainers. The laughter would escape just as the life of Egypt had es- caped, to be pissed down the river in the dead of night. Cheops saw that his The King Is Dead 9 ‘I sold –’ He began to say it, then stopped, shook his head at the alien concept.

  He had not sold out, he had not sold his soul. He had made a stupid mistake. He had bargained with the Trickster, and that is a trade that the Gods themselves always lose. Why had he thought he would win?

  A movement caught his eye: a young man pushing his way through the crowd, his belt crude stained bullock hide –

• – but it is the belt of a Pharaoh –
• – his face angry, sweat-streaked and watchful –
• – and it is my face and he is looking at me and he knows what I have done – The young man pulled a knife from his belt, long bladed, iron, but the point as sharp as glass. Cheops heard a woman’s scream, saw the Levis-and-Nike guard moving away (but why should he defend him?) and before he could move the knife was deep within him, felt as an oddness, the pain afterwards and the blood spurting out, more screaming over the ringing in his ears, but it was that face, that face looking down at him, curved and cruel and familiar.

  ‘You betrayed me.’ He thinks I am his father. Cheops tried to reply, tried to tell the young man the truth before it was too late, but his breath was gone, he could only stare as the world went white and Horus came to greet him, his huge wings flapping slowly, slowly, his great falcon’s beak descending on Cheops’s chest, to pull out his heart and eat it.

Chapter One There is No..

  Fitz needed a beer. In fact he needed several beers, but he wasn’t sure he would get away with that, with the clients due to arrive at any minute. Anji would go mad if she found out, never mind his supervisor. But he couldn’t face staying here any longer: the bland, turn-of-the-century look of his hotel room was making him stir-crazy. The low wooden table, the pale rugs, the mirror-fronted wardrobe made of shiny white plastic, the glass bowl on the table with plastic grapes. This could be London, 2003, or it could be New York, 2003, or it could be Singapore, 2003. The fact that it was mid-Western America in 1852, when the place ought to have been full of pastoral Native Americans and fur traders, with the Wild Wild West just getting going, only made it even more dispiriting.

  He looked down at the shapeless blue-and-yellow uniform with the Good Times logo blazoned on the lapel. He even had a name tag, ‘Fitz Kreiner’, with a little smiley face on it, perhaps in case he didn’t feel like smiling at the customers himself. He fingered the cheap, hard-edged plastic and wondered if this had really been the best way to go about it. Getting the job had been hard enough. It was all very well for the Doctor to go on about infiltrating and researching. He didn’t have to dress up in a suit and know about Excel 2000 when he’d been abducted from the world twenty years before the spreadsheet was invented. Anji didn’t have a problem. She was used to wearing suits, used to smiling in the right places, used to talking the right kind of bull to get you the job, and, most important, used to Personal Computers. She’d sailed through. The girl doing the recruiting had, if anything, seemed puzzled that a person with Anji’s CV should want to work for an outfit like Good Times at all. Fitz – even with the assistance of some fake qualifications – had nearly muffed it. Seriously, how was he supposed to know about word-processing and spreadsheets? What did they have to do with taking tourists to visit ancient Egypt, or the Wild West, anyway? Eventually, with the help of a few hints from Anji, he’d managed to bluff and flirt his way into the pool of sheepish-looking There is No. . .

  11 ‘They’re desperate,’ Anji had muttered. After twenty-four hours on the job, Fitz could see why. If there had been any romance or glamour attached to this sort of time travel, it had disappeared long ago. The time-travel machines were bare silver cylinders without windows, and the ‘timeport’ looked just like an airport, complete with delayed flights, echoing announcements and bored and screaming children. The pay was four pounds an hour, which sounded a lot to Fitz, but Anji reliably informed him it was lousy in 2003, no more than the legal minimum. As for on-the-job perks, all Fitz had seen so far was a company pager each, one small van (for supervisor’s use only, except in emergency) and a single motor scooter between them. If Anji hadn’t used one of the Doctor’s credit cards to hire herself a flashy yellow car at the timeport they’d have had to come here in a taxi. She’d also used the cards to buy them each a mobile phone and a hand-sized video camera – a little blue and silver thing that looked like something out of a spy movie, but which Anji assured Fitz was used routinely by tourists and wouldn’t be even slightly suspicious.

  For about the tenth time Fitz looked at the briefing notes in front of him, neatly laid out in a blue plastic folder. He’d filmed each page carefully with the tiny camera, feeling rather stupid. The listed destinations were represented by codes, with a name and date attached to each: AR501, Nero’s Rome; AC624, Mandarin China. This one was WW486/7, the American West, mid-nineteenth century. The bright-faced woman who’d given them their three-hour Induction Training at the hotel had been quite definite about the contents of these folders: whatever the code, whatever the destination, the ‘holiday experience’ had to be exactly the same. The almost infinite variety of human histories was being packaged like varieties of breakfast cereal (yes, the woman had actually said that), different enough to cater to different tastes, but all manufactured to the same high standard.

  ‘Manufactured,’ muttered Fitz. That was the key word. He remembered the Doctor’s face in the TARDIS, crumpling, amused and disturbed at first as he watched the almost identical collections of concrete towers and souvenir shops on the scanner screen, then hardening, angry, and finally, without expression. He hadn’t let on what he’d been thinking, but it was clear that far from hav- ing put history to rights by his drastic intervention to stop Watchlar and the Eternines, he had failed totally. Things were much, much worse.

  Fitz shook his head. He almost wished he’d stayed in Totterdown. He’d had a good job there, known some good people, and the beer was great. After a

  12 The Last Resort OK, after a while he might have ceased to exist altogether, but perhaps best not to think about that. . . He definitely needed that beer, and quick, before the tourists arrived. He slung on his leather jacket over the featureless Good Times Inc. uniform, felt his mobile phone in the pocket. Good trick, that, being able to carry a phone around. He decided to give Anji a call, just to make sure it worked. Her posting had been the Oregon Trail, and she’d gone off with the party at lunch time.

  Before he could work out which button to press, the phone rang, to the tune of the Beatles’ ‘Help!’ Since only the Doctor or Anji were likely to ring him, Fitz had decided it was appropriate.

  It was Anji. ‘Meet me in the bar,’ she said, without preamble. ‘It’s urgent.’ ‘Aren’t you going to say hello?’ Fitz wasn’t really miffed: he recognised

  Anji’s office-manager tone well enough. She didn’t bother with greetings in that mood. And why wasn’t she in Oregon? ‘Fitz, when you meet me – oh, for Pete’s sake just hurry up.’ The edge of panic in her tone got Fitz moving. He hustled out of his room and down the stairs. The bar was as standardised as his room: plush plum-coloured carpet, fake- leather chairs, a steel counter in a style which he recognised as turn-of-the- century post-modern retro something-or-other. He almost didn’t recognise Anji, though, sitting slouched against the steel with half a glass of mineral water in front of her. It wasn’t the ill-fitting clothes, clearly not her own, nor even the fact that she looked tired and scared. She looked older. He could almost swear some of her hair was grey.

  She looked at him over her shoulder, then stood up, spoke in her usual brisk way. ‘Come on, we’ve got to get back to 2003.’ ‘Why? What’s up? What about the greeting thing with the clients?’ Anji shook her head. ‘I’ll explain on the way.’ Fitz was beginning to feel annoyed. ‘What was the point of spending two days getting the job and doing the training if I’m going to get myself the sack right at the beginning of the first assignment?’

  She raised her eyebrows, looked around them at the three or four people in the bar who might be within earshot. He nodded, and she led him out through the door, out of the double doors of the lobby.

  He stopped her there. ‘Right, what. You’ve got to tell me.’ She looked back nervously at the hotel. ‘We’ve got to get away from here.’ There is No. . .

  13 ‘Worse than that.’ She was walking again. Fitz saw a silver taxi waiting, the late-generation petrol engine rustling gently. She gestured him in. ‘What happened to the hire car?’ She frowned at him. ‘The yellow hire car you got at the timeport this morning because you couldn’t be bothered to wait for a taxi.’ ‘Sorry. Rather a lot has happened to me since this morning.’ She rolled her eyes in the direction of the taxi driver. Fitz fell silent, watched the scenery swish past. Whatever was happening, it must be pretty bad if it wasn’t safe for a taxi driver to hear. ‘Oh, well, I don’t suppose I was cut out for the job anyway.’ Anji looked at him. ‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll tell you when we get there,’ she said. ‘Or at least I’ll try to.’

  ‘I don’t like these clothes.’ Fitz’s face was screwed up tight with irritation, his hand clenched over the tie half-tied on the collar of his white office shirt.

  Usually Anji found this amusing, even charming – Fitz’s childishness, his lack of interest in anything that was routine, tidy or businesslike. Now she thought it was out of place. Way out. She felt her own hands clench and unclench, automatic, unstoppable, as if they belonged to another person’s body.

  ‘Don’t you ever think of anything outside yourself?’ she snapped. ‘What’s the point?’ He gestured over the vast rank of suits, the seemingly endless maze of wardrobe rails rising towards the roundelled walls. ‘We know what’s going to happen. It’ll all end happily ever after.’

  His irony was out of place, too. ‘Be serious,’ she said; then regretted it. It was too much like what she would say – what she had said before when – what she might say if she hadn’t seen –

  She felt giddy for a moment. She remembered Fitz’s uncomprehending ex- pression out in the square in Jumpsville, his voice saying ‘Anji – stop messing about.’ Or had he said, ‘Be serious’, copying her? And she’d had to pretend not to know him.

  ‘Sorry.’ Fitz’s voice now was firmer, older. She looked up, saw that he was watching her. He looked down and began knotting his tie, inexpertly. Anji stepped forward to help him. Their hands touched for a moment. It wasn’t very reassuring.

  ‘What if. . . ?’ he began. ‘I mean there must be some other way of doing this.

  14 The Last Resort Anji shook her head, avoided making eye contact. I can’t bear this, she wanted to say. But she couldn’t. She tried to remember the last time she’d had a choice, a real choice that would actually make a difference. The vast clothing store seemed to fold in on her, like a Next warehouse painted by Escher, and the faint humming of the TARDIS in flight became sinister, oppressive.

  With a slight popping sound, Fitz pushed a cufflink home. Anji smoothed her own charcoal-coloured jacket into place and they set off for the console room. Anji didn’t want to see the Doctor, particularly, and was glad when they found the room empty, the central column on the console stilled. She checked the screens: they showed an office, steel and glass with a view of what she hoped was London in twilight. The yearometer showed 2003.

  Good. Anji flicked the door control, and led Fitz out into the real world. What little was left of it.

Chapter Two Happy Days

  ‘You should live your life in the best way you can. You don’t know what day the world will choose for you to die.’ The Martian’s twin antennae twitched slightly as he nodded. The deep grooves on the bony surface of his skull took up the sunlight from the open window. They looked like the canyon country of his native world in the famous Peter Scott picture: a polished russet with thin lines of black and green. His eyes, silver geodesic domes spotted with the ochre lichen of age, surveyed the plain red Formica top of the table he was scrubbing. He didn’t look up at Jack.

  Jack, impatient, cracked his knuckles. ‘Does that mean yes or no?’ The Martian laughed, a sound like a saw biting metal. ‘You are not yet an adult, Jack.’ He turned with the cloth and sprayed a shimmer of polish on the front of the refrigerator, then began scrubbing. ‘You’re asking me for wisdom, but I’m a servant, a member of an inferior species –’

  ‘You’re the oldest person I know!’ And the most infuriating, thought Jack, but he didn’t say it. Mom had told him to always be polite to Martians. ‘And you’re not inferior!’ Sio’phut stopped polishing, turned his head on its pivot to stare at Jack. ‘Look at it this way. When your people came to Mars, we had a civilisation that had lasted a million years. We had ceremonies of negotiation. We had tiny, intricate machines that measured our water almost by the molecule. We spent entire seasons just setting out the pebbles in our courtyards so that they were in accordance with the traditions of a thousand generations of ancestors, and yet at the same time new. Your people had – what? Four spaceships, a couple of dozen oxygen tents, and a brace of assault rifles. It took ten years for you to all but wipe us out.’

  Jack blushed. He wanted to say he was sorry, but he’d already learned that wouldn’t earn him the old Martian’s respect. He heard a motor outside, looked out of the window at the hard blacktop of the driveway: but the sound faded.

  16 The Last Resort ‘So the answer’s no? I shouldn’t use the machine? It would be a bad thing to do?’ The Martian’s big latticed eyes darkened from silver to amber, which was better than a laugh. ‘The answer’s “be careful”, Jack-o,’ said the Martian quietly. ‘Be careful, be- cause nothing lasts for ever, and glory can turn on you.’ Jack nodded. ‘I’m going to try, anyway.’ Sio’phut turned back to the shining front of the refrigerator and began to polish it again. ‘Of course you are,’ he said. Jack turned slowly and left the kitchen. He checked on his sister Sammy in the front room, but she was still asleep on the couch, her thumb in her mouth. His mom would be home in a few minutes. Sammy would be safe enough till then, with Sio’phut just in the kitchen. He tiptoed past her and out through the side door into the garage, then shut the door behind him as quiet as he could.

  The garage wasn’t used for cars any more. His dad had built a double garage off from the house, so that he and Mom could have a car each. Jack had taken over this old one. It was an ordinary kid’s room, with posters of rocket ships and railway trains on the walls. There was a record player, a radio, even a black-and-white TV with the antenna wired up to the roof. Up against the opposite wall to the TV was a plain wood workbench, covered in electrical components, the resistors and capacitors sorted numerically, the wires in neat coils, the bigger stuff – valves, transistors, variable capacitors – laid out in plastic trays so that they couldn’t roll off. Several circuit diagrams in pencil were sellotaped to the wall above, and a soldering iron with its cord carefully coiled around the base hung from a hook.

  Next to the workbench was the time machine. Jack couldn’t suppress the rush of pride every time he looked at it. This was something no other kid could do. It was nothing to look at, just a breadboard rig lashed to an old green armchair, with a car battery and a coil to get the voltage up for the valves. But he knew every wire in that circuit, every ohm of resistance and every pico-farad of capacitance. He could follow the trail of electrons along copper, the track of positrons along the saturnium coils of its QX No.4 valves.

  It was his idea. He didn’t know how anyone could have missed it, but loads of people had. He’d been reading about the properties of QX No.4s and positron flow. The book had said that the positrons flowed backwards in time across the coils – just for a few hundred thousandths of a second. And he’d thought: All I

  

have to do is take that and amplify it. He knew how to build an amplifier – he’d Happy Days

  17 Now he was fourteen, and he’d built a time machine. He sat in the chair, smelling its familiar old-cloth smell, checked the straps (a left-over car safety belt) and fitted them around his body. He put his hand on the cold smooth metal of the power switch. As he did so he caught a sidelong glimpse of himself in the shiny TV screen: a small, round-faced kid with freckles and short dark hair. An ordinary kid, as his folks kept telling everyone proudly, saying it as if ordinary meant extraordinary.

  No. What his folks thought was what every kid’s mom and dad thought, if they were any good. But a time machine meant extraordinary, no more questions asked.

  A few seconds connected to the battery and the coil had enough power for the valves. Jack put his hands on the row of four plastic switches that controlled the power flow.

  One – two – three – The humming of the circuitry rose, not a brash loud humming like the ma- chines in movies, hardly a sound at all. Jack’s view of the doorway lensed as space-time warped. His image in the TV screen fuzzed and vanished, bent out of the edge of his vision.

  Jack felt the fourth switch under his hand. It was the red one. The final amplification stage. So far he’d travelled back in time about two and a half seconds – long enough for him to know it was working, but not long enough to be very interesting. The final circuit provided the real power, boosted the interval to a hundred and fifty years. He’d thought about trying for a thousand

• – he could get enough power – but had decided that this was far enough. He could see the American wilderness just before the farmers came. He could see the bison, vast herds on the prairie instead of just a few standing around in the park. There would be Indians: he could find out if what Sio’phut had told him was true, about the whites deliberately wiping them out just like we’d done to the Martians, or whether his father was right and the Indians – and the Martians – had been no good anyways. He looked at the new valve, the bright solder on the mounting gleaming, barely cold.

  He could have built a variable interval into the circuit, but he wanted to make sure he got back to the present when he reversed the polarity: what would happen if he tweaked the interval from a hundred and fifty to a hundred and forty-nine years, or a hundred and fifty-one? When he tried to get back he’d never get within a month of the day he left. The tolerances of the fixed ca- pacitors and the valves were pretty good, but he knew that variable capacitors

  18 The Last Resort unreliable. A speck of dust could make it impossible for him to get home.

  Even now, it was risky. If anything failed, there was no way back. Still, Sio’phut had said ‘be careful’. He hadn’t said ‘don’t do it’. Jack’s finger pushed down the switch, and with a slight popping sound the world rippled into darkness.

  Into light. Darkness – light – dark – light – darklightdarklight – Grey.

  He thought he could see flecks of black moving inside it, like soot in smoke. He peered at them, leaning forward against the straps in an effort to see better. Some of them seemed to have shapes, like crystals – he wished he’d thought to bring his dad’s field glasses. He hadn’t thought there’d be anything to see whilst he was actually travelling. Some of them were getting quite big, boulder sized – then bigger still, like drifting mountains.

  Jack felt his fists clench on the familiar cloth of the chair arms. If there was anything that big he was in trouble. What if he got hit? There were lights on the drifting things now, bright pinpoints that sent daz- zling rainbow discolorations through the grey like a bow-wave. Jack’s machine began to jolt and rock like he was on a fairground ride. A vast shadow moved in the grey light, rippled into form, and revealed itself to be a building – a blue, silent building, with cathedral windows and a blue light flashing on top. For a second the light seemed to envelop him. Jack stared. Obviously he wasn’t the first person to invent time travel! But it didn’t look quite human, somehow – perhaps there were aliens who could travel in time.

  Perhaps the Martians – no, surely not. Sio’phut would have known about it.

  Bang!

  The near-at-home sound made Jack jump – he saw one of the valves had blackened, the element burned out. The others were glowing far too brightly. Another burned out as he watched, then the last two died simultaneously.

  The blue cathedral-building and its light were gone, and with it everything except a grey, empty mist. The time machine was twisting, as if it were an airplane, falling out of the sky without power. I should have listened to Sio’phut, thought Jack. He was warning me, not egging me on. I’ll never get home now.

  There was a bone-jarring impact, and Jack became aware that the chair wasn’t moving any more, it was stuck at a slight tilt. There was a wind on his cheek, and he could smell fresh dry air. Ahead were electric streetlights, and the neon sign for what looked like a bar. It wasn’t home, but it didn’t seem Happy Days

  19 Five minutes ago this would have felt like he’d failed – whatever had hap- pened to him, this obviously wasn’t 1850, and the machine was broken. But ‘failure’ felt like ‘survival’ now. Maybe the machine hadn’t worked properly at all. Maybe he was just down the road from home. Right now that would be good.

  He undid the straps and got out of the chair, and almost fell on his face. He was on a grass-covered bank by the side of a road – a good, honest, blacktop road with a white line down the middle and streetlights. A car – no, a bus – was thrumming along the road towards him, its headlights bright. He stepped back on to the verge, and watched as it passed slowly. It was big, and silver, and quieter than the buses he knew. A couple of kids waved at him from windows that had neat little blue drapes. A woman in a lemon-yellow dress frowned at him. Then the bus was past, its tail lights red. He saw the orange tell-tale of the indicator, saw it turn in beside the neon sign. He looked at the wreck of his time machine, the straps trailing from the chair like the legs of a dead spider, sighed and set off after the bus. He wasn’t home, or at least not anywhere he recognised, so he’d better find out where he was. These people should know.

  It took a couple of minutes to walk to the bar. Jack could see the name now, picked out in blue and pink neon: ‘Club Apache’. It looked like a sleazy nightclub, the kind of place his dad had told him to stay clear of. But there had been kids on the bus, so it was probably OK. He turned into the spur road where the bus was parked and saw the driver helping an old lady down the last step. As he got nearer, Jack saw the writing on the back of the bus in the lights from the club: GOOD TIMES, INC.

  TIME TRAVEL TOURS OAKSVILLE, LOUISIANA

  Time travel tours. . . ? Jack pinched himself. He didn’t think he was asleep, not really, but this was impossible. There was no time travel, except his machine. OK, someone else might have already invented it in secret and he didn’t know, but they’d hardly be running time-travel vacations without the whole world having heard about it. But here they were. Someone was organising secret vacations? It didn’t make any sense.

  Jack thought of going back, but remembered the burned-out valves. At the

  20 The Last Resort was happening here. His heart thumping, Jack advanced towards the bus. No one took any notice of him. He walked past some of the people standing around with their cases. The bus driver was talking to a tour guide. There was a little stone bridge over a stream leading into the Club Apache. Jack went across, through a door which opened of its own accord in front of him (was he in the future? But how?). He found himself in a pine-walled lobby with a plush purple carpet. A rack of glossy colour brochures was against one wall. He picked one at random. The cover showed a rose-lit pyramid with fireworks going off above it and a gold-and-blue mask like Tutankhamen’s.

  

THE SPLENDOUR THAT WAS IS. . .

EGYPT

YOU choose the period!

YOU choose the locations!

  Jack flicked open the brochure, looked at the choices. The Valley of the Kings (2500 BC) – Alexander’s Empire (330 BC) – Anthony and Cleopatra (34 BC). There was no doubt that these people meant business. He turned the page, saw an advert for a burger joint, McDonald’s. Underneath the image of a sizzling burger for a dollar ninety was the strapline ‘Now open in Giza/2500,

  Alexandria/330 and Cairo/2500/34!’

  The numbers had to be the dates. But how. . . ? Jack picked up another brochure. It was just the same, but the attraction was Tudor England. ‘Visit the

  Home of the Rose – 1580 AD from only $299!’

  It seemed expensive. The components for his machine had cost less than five dollars, and most of that had been the valves. He supposed laying down roads and lights and burger joints explained the rest of the money.

  ‘We did Medieval England last year. It was boring. And smelly.’ Jack jumped. He hadn’t noticed that the lobby was filling up behind him. He turned, saw a small girl in what looked like a vest with something written on it, cowboy jeans and tennis shoes on her feet. She was about twelve, and was holding hands with a boy of about five wearing clothes that looked the same.

  Behind her, the other passengers from the bus were milling around.

  ‘Hey, are you OK?’ asked the girl. ‘I’m fine,’ Jack said, staring at the vest. The writing on it said ‘FatBoy Slim’. It didn’t make any sense.

  ‘We’re going to do Egypt next year.’ She had an English accent, Jack realised. Or perhaps East Coast: he always Happy Days 21 ‘Are you sure you’re OK?’ she asked.

  ‘I – yes. We were going to do Egypt too.’ He wondered why he’d said that. Now she was going to –

  ‘Which period? I think the Tutankhamen one’s fascinating myself.’ ‘Uh – yes.’ He tried desperately to think of something he knew about Tu- tankhamen. A violent drumming started, quite suddenly, so loud that it seemed to be shaking the floor. The girl took no notice at all, so Jack decided he’d better try to go on with the conversation. ‘1400 BC wasn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right! They’ve got a five-star hotel in that period now. We usually go five-star but this time –’ ‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ It was the tour guide. He spoke into a microphone, his voice booming above the drums. He was English too, by the sound of his voice. ‘Welcome to the nineteenth century! In a few minutes there will be an orientation session, but first we’d like you to meet – the Apaches!’

  An inner door burst open and an Apache warrior in full battle-dress burst in. The crowd jumped back, then, as the man smiled and began whirling a very fake-looking axe around his head, they began to clap in time with the drums.

  The ‘warrior’ gestured them towards the open doors beyond the lobby. Jack could see a swimming pool, and a stage with some very big loudspeakers.

  The girl was laughing and clapping. With her free hand she grabbed Jack’s arm and dragged him towards the inner doors. ‘Come on!’ In the background, somebody began playing a trumpet. Jack couldn’t see a trumpeter on stage – perhaps it was recorded? But the tour guide had said it was the nineteenth century! Suddenly Jack realised how all this might be happening. ‘Are you from the future?’ he asked the girl. ‘What?’ Jack realised that the question didn’t make much sense, so he rephrased it. ‘What year are you from?’

  ‘What year is it? 1852! Didn’t you read the brochure?’ ‘No! You!’ He pointed at her. ‘What year?’ She frowned at him and moved away.

  They were through the doors now. Four men were on stage, the Apache, a cowboy, but bizarrely also a policeman, a construction worker, a sailor and a man wearing an odd leather costume which looked a bit like a racing biker’s.

  They pointed out at the crowd, started singing, ‘Young man, there’s no need

  22 The Last Resort Despite the gleeful tune, Jack was beginning to feel very ‘down’ indeed. His young companion had bounced off into the crowd, still holding on fiercely to her kid brother. Everybody else seemed to be dancing, except a few of the older folks who were watching from the sidelines. A banner above the stage, in blue paint on a pale wood, said ‘Sponsored by Microsoft.’

  Who were Microsoft? Another time-travel company? Surely these weren’t real Apaches – or if they were, they’d stopped being warrior tribesmen a while ago. And the music was far too loud. Jack’s ears were ringing. He backed away through the crowd, confused. Suddenly he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned, saw the woman in the lemon-yellow dress from the bus. Close up, she looked older. The skin on her face was dry, her eyes grey, like pebbles. Her hand pinched his shoulder.

  She led him into the relative quiet of the lobby, then, before he could think about objecting, into a small room behind the cash desk. There was an odd sort of typewriter on the desk, flat, without any paper in it, with a wire leading to a TV A half-empty paper cup of coffee sat on a painted windowsill. The blind was open: Jack could see a small moth climbing up the window against the black night outside. A man sat behind the desk, a big man with dark eyebrows and dark glasses. His suit looked casual, but his manner was tense.

  Nobody spoke for a moment. ‘Why am I here?’ asked Jack. This was too much like an arrest to feel comfortable. The woman replied. ‘I saw your rig from the bus window. You need to be careful, you know. Homemade time machines are dangerous things.’ Jack couldn’t contain his curiosity. ‘You mean you have other sorts?’ ‘Where do you come from, kid? Mars?’ She sounded amused. Jack began to get annoyed. He was sure that wherever he was it was still

  America. These people didn’t have any right to just pull him in like this. If what had been done was illegal – well, they could tell him about it. He could apologise. Then they could take him home.

  ‘Jumpsville, Ohio, ma’am. I’m an American citizen.’ ‘What year?’ ‘Two thousand three.’ ‘And – let me guess – you never heard of time travel up to now?’ Something in the tone of her voice – a slight hardening, as if she might have to do something unpleasant – set off alarm bells in Jack.

  ‘Well – kind of. But I’m the first kid in Jumpsville to actually build a time Happy Days

  23 The first in the world. But he was no longer so proud of that. Or so sure about it.

  The woman nodded slowly, glanced at the man, who shrugged. ‘You’d better come along with us. What’s your name?’ ‘Jack. Jack Kowaczski.’ ‘Mine’s Lieutenant Grania Flynn. And this is Sergeant Jim Lamarra.’ ‘I guess I’d better get back to my machine now,’ Jack said. ‘I mean, I’ve proved it works. I should be going home. I don’t want to interfere –’ He remembered about the burned-out valves, but at the moment he just wanted to get away from these people. Perhaps there were other people here who could help him.

  Jack wasn’t surprised when Lieutenant Flynn shook her head. ‘Your ma- chine’s probably burned out, Jack,’ she said. ‘And those homemade rigs are always one-way tickets. You go back in time, you change history. Every time. It’s the first rule of the universe.’ She squeezed his arm, not painfully, but hard. ‘And I’m sorry to tell you this, Jack, but all the other rules are worse.’ They had a car outside. It was silver, and it looked strange. The body was curved as if it had been made in a jelly mould, more like a four-wheeled space- ship than an honest-to-goodness car. They put Jack in the back seat and locked the doors on either side of him. Sergeant Lamarra drove.

  The road widened after a while, became a two-lane highway with strip lights overhead. It was busy, lots of buses and the jelly-shaped cars, most of them silver, a few black.

  ‘So you’re from two thousand three?’ asked Flynn. ‘Who was President in ’74?’

  Jack thought for a moment. ‘Bob Heinlein, until the election. It was his second term.’ ‘You mean Robert Heinlein? The science-fiction writer?’ Jack frowned. Had Heinlein written anything? He couldn’t remember. ‘No, he was General Heinlein before he was President. He was the one who con- quered Mars.’

  Lamarra spoke for the first time. ‘God, this one’s way out. D’you think we should –’ ‘No. There’s no point. There are too many of them.’ ‘But we need to know why it’s happening.’ ‘No we don’t.’ Flynn glanced at Jack in the mirror. He saw her eyes there, still with that speculative frown. He wondered what they were talking about.

  24 The Last Resort Then Jack got it. Their history wasn’t the same as his. They’d never had a

  President Heinlein. And – ‘You mean you’ve never been to Mars?’ There was a slight pause, then Flynn nodded. Lamarra said, ‘Of course. We sent automatic probes. But there weren’t any Martians. There couldn’t possibly be, except bacteria, maybe.’

  Jack swallowed. ‘You mean you’re from a different possible – a different –’ He’d thought about this happening, but it had always made his head spin. In the end he’d just decided it was impossible. Now he wished he’d thought about it some more.

  ‘The word’s “timeline”,’ said Flynn. ‘And you’re the one who’s different, by the way. Did you really meet a Martian?’ ‘Uhh – we employ one. To do the cleaning.’ ‘Oh my Go-o-od!’ Lamarra seemed genuinely amused. ‘The boys at the lab are going to love this one!’ The car jolted under him, and Jack saw that the road had changed. This was more like the roads he would have expected in 1852: a rough mud track with stones on either side, curving between thin white trunks of pines. He stared between the flickering branches, hoping to see a glimpse of a real Apache, at least a tepee or log cabin.

  After a couple of minutes’ driving in silence, Jim Lamarra spoke again. ‘What you’ve got to realise about these timelines, Jack, is that only one of them can survive in the end. It’s like companies, or countries, or Red Indian tribes. The one that stays in business has to be the smartest, strongest, fittest. Has to have the most fun. That way, you get the greatest good for the greatest number. See? The greatest good for the greatest number. You don’t go worrying about all the little numbers –’

  ‘Shut up, Jim.’ ‘I’m just telling him, aren’t I? What’s wrong with that? He’s got to know.’ ‘No he hasn’t. Shut up.’ ‘I’m just telling him he doesn’t have to worry about the numbers.’ ‘Stop the car,’ snapped Flynn.

  Jack was glad she’d said that. The way Jim Lamarra was talking was fright- ening him – it was almost like he was nuts. The car stopped, too quickly, throwing Jack against the seat in front. The doors opened. Flynn beckoned. ‘Come on, kid. Get out.’ Jack got out, stared around at the empty forest in confusion. Had they stopped here just to have a quarrel? ‘Where’s the lab?’ Happy Days

  25 Kneel? Then he realised. Realised just before he saw the gun in her hand. He turned to run, but hit a barrier – Lamarra. He struggled, but it was no use. A rough leather glove covered his mouth, strong arms forced him face down against the hard, dusty mud. He felt cold metal against the back of his neck, felt the mechanism move as the safety catch was released.

  A huge force slammed his head against the ground. He could see a dark tide spreading against the mud. With a dull shock, he realised it was his own blood.

  This can’t happen to me, he thought, I’m an American.

  And died.

Chapter Two Happy Days are Here Again

  ‘You should live your life in the best way you can. You don’t know what day the world will choose for you to die.’ The Martian’s twin antennae twitched slightly as he nodded. The deep grooves on the bony surface of his skull took up the sunlight from the open window. They looked like the canyon country of his native world in the famous Mary Scott picture: a polished russet with thin lines of black and green. His eyes, silver geodesic domes spotted with the ochre lichen of age, surveyed the plain yellow Formica top of the table he was scrubbing. He didn’t look up at Jack.